Baba Metzia 1:8-2:1

Baba Metzia 1:8

If a person found documents assessing one’s property (for use as collateral), committing to support one’s step-daughter, for chalitzah (dissolving the bond of levirate marriage) or for a minor girl refusing an arranged marriage, appointing arbitrators or detailing any court action – in all of these cases, one should return them to the party named therein (because there is no potential negative repercussion to doing so). If one found documents of any kind in a briefcase, or rolled or tied together, he should return them. A batch of documents is defined as three that are fastened to one another. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says that if three documents refer to the same borrower and different lenders, they should be returned to the borrower; if they refer to the same lender and different borrowers, they should be returned to the lender. If a person found a document among his own papers and he doesn’t know what it is or how he acquired it, it should be retained indefinitely for Elijah to eventually resolve. If there are documents canceling debts among them, he must honor them.

Baba Metzia 2:1

Some lost objects may be kept by the finder and others must be announced. Things that one may keep include scattered fruit or coins, sheaves of grain in the public domain, cakes of figs, loaves from a baker, strings of fish, pieces of meat, wool as it is freshly-sheared from the sheep, bunches of flax and strips of purple wool; this is Rabbi Meir’s opinion. Rabbi Yehuda says that anything with an identifiable characteristic must be announced. For example, if a person found a cake of figs with a piece of pottery in it or a loaf of bread with some coins baked in, he must announce it. Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar says that brand-new (i.e., unused) utensils need not be announced (because their owners will not yet be able to identify them).